By “in the same room” do you mean in a space that is small enough that people are hearing the piano entirely acoustically? Because then this is going to come down heavily to the quality of speakers you are using with the keyboard, and my guess is you haven’t been in a situation where people are connecting a keyboard to “actual fancy” speakers in a small room, since almost no one does this? I think if you actually did this, with a very realistic keyboard, and high-quality full-range speakers, at least 80% of people wouldn’t be able to tell.
But this is a tangent: I wasn’t trying to claim that a keyboard is strictly better than a piano, just that it is enough more versatile that in many cases you’re willing to accept it being slightly worse in the role of “sounds exactly like a traditional piano” in exchange being able to sound like many other things.
By “in the same room” do you mean in a space that is small enough that people are hearing the piano entirely acoustically?
Well, yes, because the traditional setting of a piano concert does not include amplification (as I said, I come from the Old School).
I don’t question that you could probably set up a high-quality setting and fool the average person with the keyboard sound, but I would be really surprised if you managed to fool a traditional piano teacher… and those people are the people you actually need to fool if you want any chance of seeing a piano concert with traditional repertoire played on a keyboard (I mean, I’ve just spent a couple of minutes searching for videos of classical piano pieces played on a keyboard, and I can’t find anything above amateur level… I don’t think this boils down to just “pianists love tradition”).
Anyway, I wasn’t dismissing the usefulness of keyboards for study and such, but trust me if I say that conservatory professors do not consider keyboards to be worthy of actual concerts if the music was written for a piano.
My impression: this would totally fool the average person, and probably it would fool also me when I’m not paying close attention (not sure about my piano teacher). But you can still hear some small differences. Also, hearing a youtube video is not the same as hearing the real thing, because even the acoustic piano sounds more similar to its electric counterpart given that you’re hearing a recording anyway. I suppose that the difference would be bigger when listening to the instruments in person.
By “in the same room” do you mean in a space that is small enough that people are hearing the piano entirely acoustically? Because then this is going to come down heavily to the quality of speakers you are using with the keyboard, and my guess is you haven’t been in a situation where people are connecting a keyboard to “actual fancy” speakers in a small room, since almost no one does this? I think if you actually did this, with a very realistic keyboard, and high-quality full-range speakers, at least 80% of people wouldn’t be able to tell.
But this is a tangent: I wasn’t trying to claim that a keyboard is strictly better than a piano, just that it is enough more versatile that in many cases you’re willing to accept it being slightly worse in the role of “sounds exactly like a traditional piano” in exchange being able to sound like many other things.
Well, yes, because the traditional setting of a piano concert does not include amplification (as I said, I come from the Old School).
I don’t question that you could probably set up a high-quality setting and fool the average person with the keyboard sound, but I would be really surprised if you managed to fool a traditional piano teacher… and those people are the people you actually need to fool if you want any chance of seeing a piano concert with traditional repertoire played on a keyboard (I mean, I’ve just spent a couple of minutes searching for videos of classical piano pieces played on a keyboard, and I can’t find anything above amateur level… I don’t think this boils down to just “pianists love tradition”).
Anyway, I wasn’t dismissing the usefulness of keyboards for study and such, but trust me if I say that conservatory professors do not consider keyboards to be worthy of actual concerts if the music was written for a piano.
I just did a bit of looking under “classical digital piano” and found videos on the Roland LX-17 and Kawai CA901. What do you think?
My impression: this would totally fool the average person, and probably it would fool also me when I’m not paying close attention (not sure about my piano teacher). But you can still hear some small differences. Also, hearing a youtube video is not the same as hearing the real thing, because even the acoustic piano sounds more similar to its electric counterpart given that you’re hearing a recording anyway. I suppose that the difference would be bigger when listening to the instruments in person.